Some months ago, Lawrence Solum’s Legal Theory Bookworm recommendation was Allen Buchanan’s Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law.
This volume articulates a systematic vision of an international legal system grounded in the commitment to justice for all persons. It provides a probing exploration of the moral issues involved in disputes about secession, ethno-national conflict, “the right of self-determination of peoples”, human rights, and the legitimacy of the international legal system itself. Buchanan advances vigorous criticisms of the central dogmas of international relations and international law, arguing that the international legal system should make justice, not simply peace among states, a primary goal, and rejecting the view that it is permissible for a state to conduct its foreign policies exclusively according to what is in the “the national interest”. He also shows that the only alternatives are not rigid adherence to existing international law or lawless chaos in which the world’s one superpower pursues its own interests without constraints. This book not only criticizes the existing international legal order, but also offers morally defensible and practicable principles for reforming it.
This was a book I’d been waiting to see for a long time– a book that started as a follow-up to Buchanan’s renowned work on secession but grew into a broader statement about international law and normative theory. But I had to wait a while longer; Solum’s recommendation preceded the release of the book to the general public.
Anyway, as of last week, it’s finally out. I’m a couple of chapters in, and it’s a very good, very important work, just as Solum said. Buchanan maintains the line between positive and normative, and that between philosophy and law, much more carefully defined than is often the case in works on international law, thereby allowing himself full use of the resources of normative philosophy to talk about international legal systems and institutions.
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